Right Around the Bend

In stark contrast to the pain radiating through the area, I have six festive, colorful band-aids decorating my butt. Tonight, I will have seven. Why? Because three days a week, my friend comes over and gives me an injection--the needle, easily the size of a Buick--of Bicillin into my heiney. I am tempted to post a picture of my decked-out rear, but I will spare you. (Sorry, Kathy T.)

The shots last about six minutes; sometimes longer. The Bicillin is very, very thick and the slower the injection, the less painful they are (or so the theory goes). The reason my butt is still covered in band-aids is to mark the site of each injection. Even when the spots don't feel painful anymore, it takes several weeks for the tissue to heal. Accidentally going into the same spot is something I've been warned extensively about.

I am constantly replacing the band-aids as they fall off. Like a trail of bread crumbs, there's a trail of fallen-off band-aids behind me--giving away the identity of a woman who is not supposed to eat sugar, holed up in a dark corner clutching a bag of her children's Halloween candy.

My energy levels have been quite deceptive since starting the Bicillin and I've gotten myself into trouble on more than a few occasions. I've been trying to stick close to home and only go out for short trips. I have been hovering in some kind of strange in-between world. Not quite bad enough to be housebound, but not quite well enough to classify myself as an active member of the human race again.

My mind flashes on an image that is very dear to me: The sight of an old friend--who has since drifted out of my life--bursting triumphantly out of the woods near the finish line of a long and painful marathon. I ran the last leg of the journey with him to the finish line, something that he said touched him very deeply, and my way of saying that I was more than impressed with his tenacious spirit.

Like my dearly missed friend, I feel that I, too, am almost out of the woods.